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Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11
New York Times bestselling author Bill Gertz uses his unparalleled access to America's intelligence system to show how this system completely broke down in the years, months, and days leading up to the deadly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 29, 2019
Needs to focus the blame
Since the blurb on this book has glowing endorsements from such people on the right as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Edwin Meese, and furthermore, since Washington Times (that's Times not Post) reporter Bill Gertz spends a lot of ink going after the Clinton administration and Janet Reno, one might be led to believe that the now universally acknowledged failure by the spook culture in the United States was caused by liberal restrictions on the FBI, the CIA, etc. However, a careful reading of Gertz's (frankly pedestrian, I am sorry to say) effort will reveal that he knows the failure lies exactly where the title of the book says it lies, that is, within the intelligence institutions themselves.
Consider just this little tidbit from page 28, "the FBI, as late as 1998, had only two Arabic speakers who could translate documents written in Arabic." Imagine that: billions of dollars spent for high tech equipment, "Chevy suburbans," international travel for all those Ivy League grads to talk to other button-down guys in other countries, and all those hours fighting turf wars and playing cops and robbers to keep the price of street drugs high, and guess what? there's virtually nobody who can read the reports from the Middle East! Gertz emphasizes the point in the next paragraph by quoting former director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey: "Obviously, both the FBI and the CIA would have been very well advised MUCH EARLIER to have trained, or retrained, or hired a much larger group of people who spoke Arabic, Farsi, and some of these languages of the Mideast." (My emphasis.)
That's a "duh, dude" and it goes back well before the Clinton administration. Indeed, Gertz likes to remind us of the intelligence failures pre-Pearl Harbor. (See, e.g., page 36.) I would like to remind everybody of two other points, one that the premier intelligence agency director of Spook Culture and part-time architect of how to spy and be spied upon is none other than the former director of the CIA, our past president and father of the present president, George H.W. Bush. His mentality and legacy is partly responsible for an intelligence community mentality that is insular, and intellectually and educationally incestuous to the point of something close to sterility. Thanks to a long over reliance on high tech and white male conservative operatives our intelligence institutions are without the means to penetrate cultures other than our own.
My second point is, the failures continue! Where is Osama bin Laden? Where is Saddam Hussein? Where are the perpetrator(s) of the anthrax mailings? Clinton's excuse for not getting Osama bin Laden, as reported by Gertz, was fear of civilian casualties. After 9/11 we gave up a lot of the niceties about collateral damage and let it fly. But again we missed him and we missed Saddam Hussein. And with the number of possible perps that could have had the knowledge, the opportunity and the motive for mailing weapons grade anthrax to select domestic targets countable by, say, the Easter Bunny, one would think, one would readily imagine that the FBI knows darn good and well who mailed the pathogens, leaving many of us to speculate (especially considering the deadening silence coming from the White House) that somebody, somewhere has already blown that case.
The sad and frustrating truth that almost everyone now knows about American intelligence, and something that Gertz should have emphasized, is that we will have no effective intelligence, no effective counterintelligence, and no effective way to prevent terror until the cultures in the FBI, the CIA and the other intelligence communities enjoy a fresh and massive infusion of more cosmopolitan, more sophisticated, more multi-ethnic and more diversified personnel. And that, my friends, will take decades. We are offering $25-million for the cold, dead body of Saddam Hussein, and we are getting no takers. You want to know why? Because there is not an American spook in the entire Middle East who can convey convincingly that kind of message to the people on the ground, the street and village people of the Middle East who might have some inkling. Our intelligence community has been so high and mighty and divorced from any effect of criticism for so long that it actually has no idea of what a lousy job it has been doing. It lets criticism run off his back like so much political dishwater not realizing for a moment that it has failed.
One hopes now, that with the right and the left in agreement on those failures, effective change is taking place and we will be spared the horror of another 9/11 in the form of a suitcase nuke blowing up in one of our harbors. One hopes.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
Since the blurb on this book has glowing endorsements from such people on the right as Jeane Kirkpatrick and Edwin Meese, and furthermore, since Washington Times (that's Times not Post) reporter Bill Gertz spends a lot of ink going after the Clinton administration and Janet Reno, one might be led to believe that the now universally acknowledged failure by the spook culture in the United States was caused by liberal restrictions on the FBI, the CIA, etc. However, a careful reading of Gertz's (frankly pedestrian, I am sorry to say) effort will reveal that he knows the failure lies exactly where the title of the book says it lies, that is, within the intelligence institutions themselves.
Consider just this little tidbit from page 28, "the FBI, as late as 1998, had only two Arabic speakers who could translate documents written in Arabic." Imagine that: billions of dollars spent for high tech equipment, "Chevy suburbans," international travel for all those Ivy League grads to talk to other button-down guys in other countries, and all those hours fighting turf wars and playing cops and robbers to keep the price of street drugs high, and guess what? there's virtually nobody who can read the reports from the Middle East! Gertz emphasizes the point in the next paragraph by quoting former director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey: "Obviously, both the FBI and the CIA would have been very well advised MUCH EARLIER to have trained, or retrained, or hired a much larger group of people who spoke Arabic, Farsi, and some of these languages of the Mideast." (My emphasis.)
That's a "duh, dude" and it goes back well before the Clinton administration. Indeed, Gertz likes to remind us of the intelligence failures pre-Pearl Harbor. (See, e.g., page 36.) I would like to remind everybody of two other points, one that the premier intelligence agency director of Spook Culture and part-time architect of how to spy and be spied upon is none other than the former director of the CIA, our past president and father of the present president, George H.W. Bush. His mentality and legacy is partly responsible for an intelligence community mentality that is insular, and intellectually and educationally incestuous to the point of something close to sterility. Thanks to a long over reliance on high tech and white male conservative operatives our intelligence institutions are without the means to penetrate cultures other than our own.
My second point is, the failures continue! Where is Osama bin Laden? Where is Saddam Hussein? Where are the perpetrator(s) of the anthrax mailings? Clinton's excuse for not getting Osama bin Laden, as reported by Gertz, was fear of civilian casualties. After 9/11 we gave up a lot of the niceties about collateral damage and let it fly. But again we missed him and we missed Saddam Hussein. And with the number of possible perps that could have had the knowledge, the opportunity and the motive for mailing weapons grade anthrax to select domestic targets countable by, say, the Easter Bunny, one would think, one would readily imagine that the FBI knows darn good and well who mailed the pathogens, leaving many of us to speculate (especially considering the deadening silence coming from the White House) that somebody, somewhere has already blown that case.
The sad and frustrating truth that almost everyone now knows about American intelligence, and something that Gertz should have emphasized, is that we will have no effective intelligence, no effective counterintelligence, and no effective way to prevent terror until the cultures in the FBI, the CIA and the other intelligence communities enjoy a fresh and massive infusion of more cosmopolitan, more sophisticated, more multi-ethnic and more diversified personnel. And that, my friends, will take decades. We are offering $25-million for the cold, dead body of Saddam Hussein, and we are getting no takers. You want to know why? Because there is not an American spook in the entire Middle East who can convey convincingly that kind of message to the people on the ground, the street and village people of the Middle East who might have some inkling. Our intelligence community has been so high and mighty and divorced from any effect of criticism for so long that it actually has no idea of what a lousy job it has been doing. It lets criticism run off his back like so much political dishwater not realizing for a moment that it has failed.
One hopes now, that with the right and the left in agreement on those failures, effective change is taking place and we will be spared the horror of another 9/11 in the form of a suitcase nuke blowing up in one of our harbors. One hopes.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”
December 11, 2020
Gertz does a great job of relating the mishaps and failures of the US Intelligence Community. There is some rightful concern among some that perhaps his political bias may taint the accuracy of the stories.
February 7, 2010
Another good read from Gertz.
Gertz comes to some of the same conclusions that Odom does in Fixing Intelligence, especially as it relates to the FBI. The FBI may never be an effective tool in the intelligence field. What is perhaps most disturbing however, is how the FBI failed so badly on multiple levels. The SYSTEM broke. The fact that a single individual or small set of individuals could thwart the recommendations of the "ground agents" in Minneapolis goes near to the heart of the institutional issues with the FBI (as it relates to the Moussaui aspect of the attacks). The institutional roadblox that confronted Special Agent Rowley are unconscionable. Perhaps worse however, have been all public statements made since the attacks, dumping the so-called lack of probably cause to search Moussaui's computer before the attack but then acknowledgement by FBIHQ that probable cause did exist AFTER the attacks is nothing but CYA tactics.
What is most ironic however is how the FBI bumbled the collection of evidence on the attackers that was readily available to normal police operations which is what the FBI is _supposed_ to be good at.
If you have limited time to read this book, focus on the appendices; a good addition by Gertz.
Gertz comes to some of the same conclusions that Odom does in Fixing Intelligence, especially as it relates to the FBI. The FBI may never be an effective tool in the intelligence field. What is perhaps most disturbing however, is how the FBI failed so badly on multiple levels. The SYSTEM broke. The fact that a single individual or small set of individuals could thwart the recommendations of the "ground agents" in Minneapolis goes near to the heart of the institutional issues with the FBI (as it relates to the Moussaui aspect of the attacks). The institutional roadblox that confronted Special Agent Rowley are unconscionable. Perhaps worse however, have been all public statements made since the attacks, dumping the so-called lack of probably cause to search Moussaui's computer before the attack but then acknowledgement by FBIHQ that probable cause did exist AFTER the attacks is nothing but CYA tactics.
What is most ironic however is how the FBI bumbled the collection of evidence on the attackers that was readily available to normal police operations which is what the FBI is _supposed_ to be good at.
If you have limited time to read this book, focus on the appendices; a good addition by Gertz.
August 25, 2007
Bill Gertz has a reputation in the intelligence community. He is a reporter for the Washington Times but don't let writing for a "Tier 2" publication fool you. He is very astute in what is going on in the intelligence community and has sources that some very high placed people would like to get their hands on. When enough people are really worried about how you get your highly placed information, you get that deserved reputation.
But since what he writes about is usually not what people want to talk about, he might be shrugged off as being a "crack-pot." I admit that his style is one of instilling worry and fear when people simply want to be optimistic.
But that doesn't mean that what he writes about isn't true. You ignore his observations at your own risk, in my opinion.
Again, Gertz has a reputation in the community. 'Nuff said.
But since what he writes about is usually not what people want to talk about, he might be shrugged off as being a "crack-pot." I admit that his style is one of instilling worry and fear when people simply want to be optimistic.
But that doesn't mean that what he writes about isn't true. You ignore his observations at your own risk, in my opinion.
Again, Gertz has a reputation in the community. 'Nuff said.
February 11, 2008
I can't believe I spent money or time on this blatant right wing propaganda. Although the publisher is listed as Plume, I think it was really published at Langley.
February 21, 2009
I read this a year or two after 911. This investigative reportor sheds light on how politics influenced, and ultimately led to the failure of, our national security.
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February 23, 2009Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 by Bill Gertz (2002)
November 28, 2011
I read this book right after it was published and it gave a lot of insight into the U.S. Intelligence apparatus and the knowledge that the govenment had available to them. A sad tragedy.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews